Tell Me It's Real(35)

But I didn’t. I didn’t drive down to Xonoca to open my bar called Taco’s Bell. I decided against that whole life because I had to go to work and face my motherfucking fears. To prove the point to myself, I turned on the stereo again and put in Celine Dion’s cover of “All By Myself” and sat at the stop light, waiting for it to turn green. “Allllll byyyyyyyy myyyyyyyyyysellllllllllllf,” I sang forlornly. “Don’t wanna be, allllllll byyyyy—” And then I realized my windows were down again and the same woman from yesterday was sitting next to me. Except this time, she wasn’t singing along, but rather staring at me with tears streaming down her face, her nose running. She looked positively wrecked.

“I don’t want you to be all by yourself!” she cried at me when she saw me watching her. “You go get yourself a man! You deserve it so much!”

“I’m trying!” I shouted back, above Celine. “The motherfucker kissed me yesterday!” It felt good to share that.

“Where?” she called back.

“In the supply closet!”

“No! I meant where on your body?”

“What?”

“Did! He! Kiss! Your! Penis!” she screamed as she sobbed.

I gaped at her.

“Hey, move it, assholes!” A horn started to honk behind me. And it was the same motherfucking guy in the truck from yesterday. This time, I did flip him off because I wanted to continue the conversation with the strange lady in the car next to me to find out why her first thought would be that I got kissed on the cock instead of the mouth? But she had already pulled away, and Celine Dion was starting to grate on my nerves, and I was kind of worried the guy in the truck would follow me and rip off my testes, so I drove away rather quickly, trying to speed around a few cars to put some distance between me and the truck driver.

Twenty minutes later, after dealing with the police officer who pulled me over for speeding and weaving in and out of traffic to the point where the first thing he asked me was, “Sir, if you’re drunk this early, then you’ve got a drinking problem,” I pulled into my parking space on the side of the street. My hands were sweating, and I was breathing heavily. I looked myself in the rearview mirror, and my eyes were so wide, I’m pretty sure you could see parts of my brain poking through. “Calm down,” I whispered hoarsely. “Just calm the fuck down, and everything will be okay. You’ve already had his tongue in your mouth. You can do this.”

So without looking, I opened my car door.

And it was about that time that Vince Taylor was riding his bike past my car. Physics teaches us that when a moving force meets an immovable object, bad shit happens to hot people. I think Sir Isaac Newton said that. Or Sir Elton John. I don’t know. I get my “Sirs” confused sometimes.

But, regardless, the moving force of Vince and his bike met the immoveable object of my opened car door. I heard him say, “Oh bananas,” and then he crashed into the inside of the door, flipped up and over it, and landed on his back on the pavement on the other side. The front tire of his bike crumpled before the whole thing fell over onto the ground next to my car with a metallic clang.

Then it got really quiet.

I just stared.

I thought about closing the car door and just driving away, but knowing my luck, I would have run him over in the process, and I’d already had one brush with the law today. Plus, I worked for a car insurance company, and that sort of thing is frowned upon.

My next thought was I was happy he was at least wearing a helmet.

My third thought was how awful I was going to look in prison orange if he was dead.

My fourth thought was how sad I’d be if he was dead, and why didn’t I just let him kiss my cock in the storage closet?

My fifth thought was that I had to save him, just like he saved me the day before. He was the one who sort of caused me to choke on spinach, and now I was sort of (read: completely) the reason he probably had splenic lacerations and contusions on his pretty, pretty behind.

I jumped out of the car and tried to close the door, but part of his bike got caught in it and I ended up closing the door on my leg. This caused me to trip over the bent tire and I fell, skinning my hands and a knee on the asphalt. I gritted my teeth against the sharp pain, realizing that whatever I was feeling, Vince had flipped over my fucking car, so I couldn’t be bitchy about scrapes on my hands and dirty khakis (even though I was already bitching in my head).

Once I was able to disentangle myself from the stupid bike and got my leg out of my stupid car, I rushed around the door and saw Vince sprawled out near the front tire, on his back, eyes closed. He didn’t move except to ooze little driblets of blood from his right arm and left leg. Little flecks of gravel were stuck in the blood trails.